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A review by eshalliday
Rawblood by Catriona Ward
1.0
This doesn't work.
I had such high expectations after seeing positive reviews and recommendations, and this sounds like the kind of narrative&setting I usually lap up eagerly. However, read into other Goodreads reviews more closely, and you get an inkling of the ways in which this novel fails to function cohesively.
[LATER EDIT: Then, read the Goodreads questions on this book, and - spoilers notwithstanding - you'll get an even clearer idea of what kind of flaws are apparent here!]
The multiple viewpoints are tiresome; the jumping through time is baffling; the family tree is overcomplicated; the 'big reveal' is a total flop. The novel keeps promising, promising, promising that it'll get better, and... it just doesn't.
The cacophony of voices here is discordant; the 'main' character, Iris, gets completely lost in the din; the novel limps along at a pace so slow, it made me sag at the thought of taking it up again every time I did. The plot revisits certain things repeatedly, and the action just gets more and more diluted as it does so.
There is nothing here to grasp! There's no core substance to provide any impetus to keep reading. I finished the book, with pains, because I kept thinking SOMEthing would happen that justified all these rave reviews. Alas, nothing ever did. The book petered out with just as much disappointment as I'd felt all the way through. I'm left angry at the time I wasted reading this, when there are so many stellar books sitting on my 'to read' shelf, which I could have been enjoying.
I had such high expectations after seeing positive reviews and recommendations, and this sounds like the kind of narrative&setting I usually lap up eagerly. However, read into other Goodreads reviews more closely, and you get an inkling of the ways in which this novel fails to function cohesively.
[LATER EDIT: Then, read the Goodreads questions on this book, and - spoilers notwithstanding - you'll get an even clearer idea of what kind of flaws are apparent here!]
The multiple viewpoints are tiresome; the jumping through time is baffling; the family tree is overcomplicated; the 'big reveal' is a total flop. The novel keeps promising, promising, promising that it'll get better, and... it just doesn't.
The cacophony of voices here is discordant; the 'main' character, Iris, gets completely lost in the din; the novel limps along at a pace so slow, it made me sag at the thought of taking it up again every time I did. The plot revisits certain things repeatedly, and the action just gets more and more diluted as it does so.
There is nothing here to grasp! There's no core substance to provide any impetus to keep reading. I finished the book, with pains, because I kept thinking SOMEthing would happen that justified all these rave reviews. Alas, nothing ever did. The book petered out with just as much disappointment as I'd felt all the way through. I'm left angry at the time I wasted reading this, when there are so many stellar books sitting on my 'to read' shelf, which I could have been enjoying.